The Danger Game
by Lightfeet
Summary: A ship crashlands on a strange planet that has many dangers and competition


The Danger Game

Prolog

Danny was bored. He had to go through this process every single day. It was tedious and easy. Being the captain was really easy if you had the best crew in the Imperial Armada. Maybe today something would happen. It was now time for maintenance check.

"M1, M1 check."

"M1 checked."

"M2, M2, check."

"M2 checked."

"M3, M3 check."

"Umm...sir?"

"Yes?"

"We got a leak. An oxygen leak that is."

"What! How?"

"The repair man fell asleep while watching Holograms."

"You're joking, right? He's one of the best, and he drinks so much coffee that shouldn't even be possible!"

"No, sir"

"THEN EVACUATE THE STATION!"

And with that, the network was cleared from chatter.

Bob was buying a fizz pop when the alarms went off. He wondered if this was a prank or a drill. You could never tell if the captain had a prank or a real drill. As he floated down the hallway, he saw the usual lights were replaced with a bright red. That's weird, Bob thought. That's probably just a maintenance bug. He hoped so. If it were a real evacuation, then they would have bright red lights instead of the normal yellow. He then notices there was a big crowd near the escape pods.

"What's going on?" Bob asked Kenny. Kenny was Bob's best friend and drillmaster. "What drill are we doing?"

"We aren't doing a drill! This is the real thing!"

Bob's brain went numb. "What? How?"

"There's an oxygen leak. If we don't get off in twenty minutes, the cargo will be ejected automatically and we don't know what will happen!"

Right, he thought. The kynamite. It was the government's secret cargo and the key to ending the war. They had been fighting the war for 50 years, but still reached no conclusion. The aliens had been able to capture a base that was a vital resource base and the government hoped they could make a portal to send resources and troops. The key resource was kynamite. The substance was found while mining on Saturn and sent a couple miners back to earth in the middle of a lesson in Winchester school when the pickax struck the crystal.

"Hurry up! I don't want to die now!"

As Bob went inside into the escape pod, he saw the planet below them. They would have to send a SOS as they went down to the planet. As they went down, he closed the hatch, and shut his eyes. As the escape pods went down, the planet seemed to change. The jungle seemed more sinister. The junkyard seemed more alive. The ocean seemed to be making illusions. And the clouds began to be going quicker. The escapees didn't know it, but they would have a better chance surviving on the station than the planet. That's because the planet was X-9.

Back on earth, the World Committee seemed to be going frantic. "What's going on!" raged the minister. "Our best freighter has sent an SOS signal, because some idiot was watching Nickelodeon. And now the world thinks it some stupid race to get kynamite." "Well, sir, that's not the worst. We suspect it wasn't by accident that the repairman fell asleep. Last time we checked, the freighter was next to X-9." The minister's eyes widened with fear. "That planet?" "Yes sire, that one."

The frog barely had time before moving out of the way to get avoided by the rain of escape pods. They hit the ground so hard, the animals in a five-meter radius were turned into crispy critters and. The pods automatically arranged themselves into small buildings next to each other, all with their own life sustaining parts that produced food, water, and communication. There were also entertainment sections. The area was a mostly dry patch of land, with some trees here and there. People started to take check of their belongings and saw everything accounted for. The captain yelled over the confusion. He was finally able to get them to calm down. "We sent out the SOS signal people, so we will be rescued." There were shouts of joy and relief. To end their day, they were assigned where to sleep. And other things started waking up.

That morning, Nick woke to banging on his door. He was one of the passengers that were in the poor class, going off to work on frontline fighting. His parents worked hard, but the taxes where just too much. He had to be a soldier, mainly to pay of debt and because the corruption in governments all over the world. He got up and went to the door before it woke up the family who he was assigned with. Unfortunately, it was a rich family who was going to an exotic planet, and was very snobby and complained all day. The captain greeted him. So he decides to play manners and see what it was about.

"Hello, what can I could I help with?"

"Where is the Vern family?"

Nick, feeling pushed aside, said "There in the back, luxury room"

"Ok"

So while the captain went to serve the needs of the pompous family, Nick saw a small missing note on the walls.

"Captain, why is there a missing note on the wall?"

The Captain turned around annoyed, and replied,

"They don't matter. Those two people are poor class, they'll show up sooner or looking for food to scape by."

Nick was disgusted. Never had he thought that captains would be so harsh. A captain was supposed to care about every one of his passengers, not just the ones who paid the most. He walked over to the breakfast bar, and saw Terrace. Terrace was poor too. He was going to be a frontline medic. The two were paired in the same platoon. Jack was also there too. Jack was their sniper specialist, since they would be fighting in the alien city Takaro.

"How's it going?"

Terrace looked around, and smiled. He had seen the scene with the captain.

"What was that about?"

Nick explained the whole story to him. They look concerned, and a bit mad.

"So when are we going to be on the frontlines now?"

Nick shrugged. He honestly didn't know. They would be assigned to a new planet if the battle in Takaro were won. He figured if the rescue crew didn't come, they wouldn't be on the frontlines at all. That would be better than fighting, where the planets turned into meat grinders. Nick took his rations and sat next to Terrace. He wondered which planet they had landed on. It seemed like a weird planet.

"Hello! This is your captain, on the speaker! I want to give you rules, because I care about every one of you!"

"He means every one of us that gives him a big paycheck." Nick grumbled.

"First rule, at 9:00 am, everyone report to the main building. I will give you tasks to do during the day!"

"Tasks for the rich will be to hang out in rec room I bet." Nick said. Terrace snickered.

" Second rule, be careful!"

"Again, be careful if you're rich. At least leave your money to us." complained Nick

" And I would like to tell you what planet you are on!"

"Wow, first useful piece of information for us."

" We are on X-9. Enjoy your stay!"

There was a moment of silence, and then everyone started talking at once.

"Enjoy your stay?"

"We're all doomed!"

"We are going to be ripped apart to pieces by big machines!"

"A animal will eat us alive!"

"We'll get hypnotized to murder ourselves!"

Again there was a moment of silence. Then there were more ridiculous suggestions.

"We'll get our food poisoned!"

"Marshmallows will stab us when we are sleeping!"

By then, Nick had already left and was going to the main building. He went to the front desk and asked for his job.

"What's your name young man?"

"Nick Sage"

"Your job is guard duty with you platoon members, and if you see emerald members that want something, please give it to them right away."

So Nick went down to the breakfast bar again, and told Terrace and Jack the news.

"Wow dude, that's strange."

"Yeah, I know. I wonder what's up with the split in the rich and the poor."

So the went around the edges of the small outpost, and they walked around in patrol until they saw a flicker of a shadow in the woods. The all froze, huddling together with their guns, and shivered there until five minutes had passed. They went back inside the city to report to front desk.

"Hmmm, sounds like some of those lurkers we've been hearing about."

"Lurkers?"

"They stay in the shadows and take stray people in ones or twos. Now if you wouldn't mind, we have a family of four wanting a snack. Emerald level."

So the three spent another five minutes carry bowls of Cheesy-Loops and cracker delights up the stairs, while also talking about the possibilities out there.

"Who knows what could be out there?"

As day one passed in a jumble of events, an onlooker looked from the dense foliage. He had taken the two people for experimenting and wondered when they would be done for the mutation. The conversion from human to infested took awhile with the new virus, but he hoped it was worth it. The stranger moved back into the center of the forest.

Day 2

Nick woke again to the whining of the Vern family, wanting to be of this "stinking planet", and to go to their vacation home. They demanded that he bring them first class breakfast and give them a Hologram remote, with a swimming pool all to themselves. Nick sighed, wondering who made this medieval age system ruled by the rich, and went over to the emerald breakfast room to pick up the Vern family's breakfast. When he got there, he heard another announcement.

"Hello everyone, I would like remind you that we have two passengers missing."

Wow, Nick thought. He actually noticed.

"We have a teddy bear and a stuffed giraffe missing for a young emerald kid named Teddy Vern. Please stop whatever you are doing unless you are serving a emerald person's needs, and look for the two missing passengers."

Nick walked out of the room with a cart full of food and a fuming mind. He couldn't believe that the captain cared more about the rich boy's toys than the actual living passengers in the poor sector. When he got back to the room, he found that Teddy was crying a flood and his mom was trying to calm him down, promising more toys, and his dad was yelling at people on the streets to look faster and harder. The only person that didn't seem concerned was his sister, playing with her holographic dolls. So Nick went up to the dad, and said,

"Sir, your breakfast is here."

He looked around, and brightened when he saw Teddy's favorite food.

"Ah, good. Give those sweet pastries to Teddy." He then went back to yelling at people on the streets.

Nick then walked over to Teddy, and put the pastries on the table. When Teddy saw the pastries, he stopped crying and went over to eat all 30 of them. Nick saw it was then 8:45 and decided to walk over to the Main Building. Terrace and Jack were already there.

"Hey guys."

"Hey."

"So what's up?"

"We are going on a expedition of 5 miles."

"What?"

"Read the sign."

Nick peered at the sign. He saw a big block of words on the bottom. It read:

There will be an expedition with the 30 members of the army, and they will be lead by the special ops squad of five people. There will gather at the north part of the "city", and they will have full battle equipment with a squad of three armed with hi-plasmatic cannon and a engineer corps to help with makeshift turrets of metal. The will stay out for three days to expand for more land.

"Where did they get all this stuff?"

"Apparently they have a whole storage of arms and extra building pods, like 200 of them. They prepared for an emergency, but all that stuff is in the wreck of the ship."

"So that means..."

"Yep. We won't have all the turrets or cannon until we get to the ship. So we have to make do with our equipment we have for now."

"So are we going to meet up with Mathew or Paul at the north."

"Yes."

So they gathered their equipment, and marched to the north side. When they got there, they saw that there where already 15 people there, along with Mathew and Paul.

Matthew was the squad leader. He came from a poor family, but was good enough to rank up. He had an increased payment and better living quarters, but they liked him. He was friendly and smart. Paul was also okay. He came from a middle class family, so he was an artillery spotter. They were integrated into the army so they could call down artillery strikes, which were a good idea, but they didn't usually have radio contact that far away or even satellite contact if it was in high command. So Paul was just another grunt, and had taught himself camouflage.

"All right, listen up."

All the men snapped to attention at the voice of special ops. They were the most feared force in the army, and even the aliens respected them. They underwent twice as much as training, and were hand picked by the UN personally.

"We are going to go 5 miles up to the crash site, and see if anything is there. Then we will go up 10 miles to the north and set camp with whatever we have or got. If any of you have questions, address me as St. Marshal. I'm higher rank than all you lazy bums."

So they went on a hike, and kept on going until they saw the smoke. Then they all started relaxing until they heard the voice of the in the middle of all of them. They quickly went down to the wreck and saw some animals. Those ran away. They were setting camp when they heard the roar of an animal. Everyone looked frightened until one of the smallest toads they had ever seen came out of the bushes and gave the same roar again. The men all laughed with relief until they heard the voice snap over them and they went back to work. They dragged some good material, like the plasma cannon, but everything else was a children's toy. Pistols, metal riot shields, and even one of those old 20th century artillery shells.

"Man, these supplies are a joke!"

He looked up and saw the sign above the area the men were getting supplies and saw:  
Old Storage room

"YOU BLOODY FOOL! YOU WENT TO THE OLD STORAGE PLACE!"

Everybody jumped up and started running to the other storage compartment. They all froze in silence when they saw the half looted supply room with a couple of aliens poking around. The aliens turned around to see what saw going around and also froze. He was still on the path, wondering why the men were frozen in shock.

"All right, get your butts moving! You look like you ha- OH MY GOD!"

The cigar dropped from his mouth with his chin hanging down from his mouth. The aliens started the run away with some of the guns, and they shot them down. Then they started to move out the real stuff, with where much better, such as the plasmatic sniper, which shot through walls, or the crystalline turrets, which where so strong. They employed security this time, and didn't see any aliens. The strange thing was that the alien corpses turned back to human, which puzzled the men. It was a crucial moment when Nick found out that two of those corpses where the people who were missing from the town. Then the men rushed back to the town in their new equipment.

Back on Earth

There were frequent radio signals radioing back, complaining of the monarchy between the rich and poor, messages from family, and the new discovery of an alien making person on the planet. So the Minister ordered a firing of the captain of the ship, and the investigation of a hospital ship and a science ship with an escort to go the planet. The captain refused.

Back on X-9

The captain had ordered everyone to push the green button on his or her house and give it over to him. When they did, he used the compartments to make a fortress, for no one knew why. They all had their houses inside the fortress, but there was more security and emerald got more and more benefits. It was a crazy thing. But people still kept on disappearing, and more alien encounters where made.


End file.
